winds that chase sails
by Koyuki
Summary: Green can't tell what's real and what's not anymore, even in his memories. Game-verse. Green/Red


A/N: I do have a lot to say about this story, but I'll mostly keep quiet; there are a few additional author's notes at the end. While it's not necessary, I'd suggest reading **white noise** if you haven't yet because they have similar styles, so it'll probably help in understanding this story.

Warnings: slightly strange/potentially confusing

Characters/Pairings: Green/Red, Leaf, Professor Oak, various characters

Disclaimer: Pokemon is rightful property of Nintendo. No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

**winds that chase sails**

There's nothing particularly different about this time compared to any of the others. Maybe he has just lost a gym match and is tired, but still has to climb Mt. Silver. Maybe it's snowing extra hard today and he's sick of being pelted by the hail. Perhaps he's fallen off a ledge and has to fight off five more wild Pokémon on his way up. Or maybe he just has to take the long way around because a tree had fallen onto the path.

It could be any of those things, but Green doesn't think it is. After all, those are small things and they have happened before. They didn't seem important then nor do they now, these small troubles on the road that marked the exact distance between him and Red.

He's not lost, but he doesn't know anything about this place. Though his body has already memorized the steps needs to find Red, he can't tell you what species of Pokémon live on this road or where there might be a house in case the blizzard gets too bad. He doesn't even know the name of this route.

All Green knows is white, the white snow in front of him, and what looks like the exact same thing behind him. His memories of Mt. Silver have become his memory of everything, a never-ending whiteness that blankets all the events before and after it. Green can't remember a time that he hasn't been climbing Mt. Silver, and he can't imagine a time he won't be. (_That's not true,_ his brain reminds him. _You couldn't have known about Mt. Silver for more than three years._)

It's just him standing in the center point of white emptiness, stretching to infinity in every direction, with Red waiting for him at one end of that forever.

Most of all, can't remember why he's doing this at all. He's moved past this, the thought flickers in some corner of his brain, hasn't had to remember Mt. Silver in a long time.

He thinks he might be going insane.

It's almost a relief when he finds his way out of the storm, until he realizes that Red has been waiting for him at the front of the cave, staring at Green with those damn red eyes.

Green has always been in love with Red's eyes. Red is, after all, the most vibrant of colors, and has always reminds him of the sun on the mornings in his childhood when he and Red would stay up all night to watch it rise over the Pallet horizon or the rows of Pokéballs stacked on shelves in his grandfather's lab.

Through the white snow, though, red looks like blood.

"Green?" Red asks first, his voice almost lost in the blizzard. And for the first time in a long time, Green has nothing to say, his mind blank with the chaotic white noise inside his head.

When he finally speaks, words come out of his mouth like vomit. "I can't do this anymore," he says, and immediately thinks, _Shit, that's not what I mean -_ even though he can't bring himself to say that part. Then, he realizes, that maybe it is what he really means, whatever "this" is.

Even though Red has no expression, Green can see him try to blank out the pain in his red eyes.

_Say something_, Green wants to yell, but it dies in his throat because - what is Red supposed to say? But even though he knows Red isn't good with words, Green wants him to just say anything, anything at all, because with every passing second, "this" feels more and more like "them" and that "them" would be ending if neither would do anything about it.

_Aren't you going to stop me?_ Green wants to know, because the horrible realization dawns on him that maybe he _is_ crazy and none of this means anything at all. All of this has been pointless, and Green doesn't know what he's been wasting the last eternity of his life for.

"Bye...bye," he says and tosses the bag of supplies he's been carrying in Red's general direction. Red doesn't even look at it when it lands a few feet away from him.

Green waves casually in Red's direction, like it doesn't mean a thing, and then turns around to leave. _Ask me to stop. Ask me to stay. Ask me what I want,_ he thinks, but he knows he's being stupid. Green doesn't even know if he _can_, even if Red does ask.

Absurdly, it's Red's yellow rat that chases after him into the snow storm. "Pipi - chu!" it yells, and Green hesitates for a maybe moment, but he doesn't stop.

Green can feel Red's eyes burning a hole into his back as he walks away, but he doesn't bother to look back and see.

o

Green can remember a hundred different instances when he first fell in love with Red. He doesn't organize these memories by chronology but rather by some arbitrary system of value he's assigned them. In reality though, it might be because he can't even remember when most of these happened, even in relation to each other, and Green is afraid that he might be losing all sense of time.

There's one particular memory he always thinks about with the rest of these, but he doesn't know why. He's pretty sure it's not the earliest - maybe the second or the third - but it always leaves him with the impression that he is too young to understand what love is in it anyway.

If he were quite honest with himself, maybe he'd realize it's not one event or even two, but a collection of what he remembers about Red and growing up and all of his favorite things rolled into one, which might be why it always seems to slip back into that group of happy memories, even when he reminds himself that it doesn't belong with the rest.

He remembers sneaking into Red's room through the windows in the dead of night because he'd just had the coolest dream and would forget it by morning if he didn't tell anyone right then - but he doesn't find Red in his bed. Instead, Red is hiding in his closet and crying because he thinks he's seen a ghost and now he can't fall asleep.

Green may or may not have believed him back then and might or might not have also been a little scared himself, but it didn't matter because he was there and he was going to protect Red. So he tells Red about his cool dream to soothe his fears, and they laughed and played there all night until both of them fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

(Green is right about the dream though, because now, he can't recall a single thing about it.)

There's an ensuing panic the next morning because neither Red's mother nor Green's grandfather knows where they are, and it takes them a couple of hours to find the both of them asleep in Red's closet.

They get a long, slightly hysterical lecture for worrying her, and how could they do this to her? What if they'd been kidnapped - all the while with his grandfather standing in the back, nodding solemnly to what she's said. In the end, she hugs them, sobbing - she's just happy they're okay - and asks them to never do that again, ever, and that's that.

Still, she never locks Red's windows.

o

Leaf unexpectedly shows up at his gym a few days later and scares away a handful of trainers like she does every time she visits. It's the least number of trainers he's had since he opened the gym - how long ago now? - especially since half of them left when he'd announced earlier that he'd be doubling the training regimen and that the gym would no longer be closed on Saturdays.

Unfortunately, Green isn't really in the mood to deal with Leaf - not that he's ever in the mood to deal with her, but he usually has the courtesy to put up with her, if only because she was visiting him from lands far away and _only_ for short bouts of time - but this time, he barely gives her the time of day.

She follows him around like a stray puppy as he attempts to monitor his trainers' progress, menacingly looking over their shoulders to make sure they're properly doing his training exercises, but it's generally hard to be menacing with a rather loud and energetic girl trailing behind you.

In the end, he agrees to battle her - "For old time's sake," she'd said - and lets Eevee wipe the floor with her exotic team of Pokémon. He should add them to his Pokédex later, he thinks. His grandfather would probably like that.

(They all look like vaguely familiar forms that he can't distinctly recognize, smatterings of blacks and whites and greys with a few flashes of red here and there. Green hopes the Pokémon in that region just look that weird, and it's not his eyes.)

"You're no fun," she accuses him, but Green reminds her that she was the one who'd insisted on the battle, and, "I thought you weren't going to let Eevee fight anymore." Green doesn't have a good response for that one.

"You know," she says, "just because you broke up with Red doesn't mean you should take it out on other people."

_I didn't break up with Red_, Green's about to tell her, when he realizes that - no, that's not right at all, because he's sure - he's certain - that he'd never been with Red in the first place. Green doesn't know anything about Mt. Silver, and Red is still champion of the Elite Four and has definitely not been missing for three years.

Instead he says, "I don't know what you're talking about," and takes Leaf out to dinner (and promises to let her stay in his gym for as long as she wants), which is the closest he'll ever get to an apology anyway.

Leaf looks at him pityingly for maybe all of out ten minutes before she gets over it, and tells him about her travels - the gym leaders she's fought, badges she's won, the Pokémon she's seen, and her newest exotic boyfriend. "He's from Isshu," she giggles between taking sips of her milkshake. "We're going there next week."

"That's nice," Green says.

"You should go," Leaf tells him. "Hoenn - Hoenn is beautiful. It's tropical and warm. Or, you should visit Sinnoh. Since you're already used to the cold and snow." She laughs like it's a joke, but Green just glares at her because there's nothing funny about it all at all.

"I can't. I have a gym to run," he snaps.

"Find someone to replace you. Someone temporary. It doesn't have to be for long," she suggests.

He shakes his head and doesn't even think about it again.

"You could come with us," she says a few days later, when she's about to leave.

"No," he says firmly, and not just because he's as thrilled about the idea as Leaf's boyfriend from Isshu looks.

"Okay, your loss," she says and shrugs casually. She pulls him down for a kiss - on the cheek of course, because her boyfriend is watching and because she wouldn't again, not after that time.

He watches them drive off, and then wonders what to do with the quiet that's returned to his life again.

He hasn't been home in eight days.

It's been a week since he's last seen Red.

o

The fallout isn't a fight or even a one-sided argument so much as the metaphoric equivalent of setting fire to a forest.

One day, Green remembers just suddenly understanding what love is. It's an accumulation of everything that he doesn't quite comprehend coming into focus like with a single click. Or a pop - a snap, a spark, or maybe even a thunderbolt from a Pikachu hitting him squarely in the face. Then, he understands the fluttering butterflies, the heat rising to his cheeks, the complete inability to act normally around Red.

For a nine-year-old boy with a crush, having the person you like not pay attention to you and having the person you like actually pay attention to you are both equal parts terrifying and each worse than the other.

What he wants to say is, "I like-like you. Let's play always Pokémon masters together," but instead it comes out as, "Go away! Leave me alone!"

And Red just looks at him with those sad, sad red eyes, red from crying, and asks, "Don't you want to play with me anymore?"

_Yes, I do,_ he tries to say, but when it comes out of his mouth, all twisted and grotesque, it sounds much more like, "No."

Being around Red makes him nervous, and Green never gets to say what he means. He knows it doesn't happen once, that kids are stupid and they never take the first hint or even the second and sometimes not even the third, but to him, it's all blurred into one single event. He doesn't want to remember how he's made those haunting red eyes sad more than once.

At ten, Green is selfish. He can't find the right things to say to Red, but he doesn't want Red to pay attention to anyone else but him either, so he just hurts Red. _Look at me!_ he wants to say, but instead the words tumble out of him like vicious daggers.

He even convinces his grandfather to give Red a Pokémon. He wants to travel with Red, to see all sorts of exciting things together, be Pokémon masters together. But when Red beats him soundly in their first Pokémon battle, Green thinks - _no, not good enough._ He's not good enough to travel with Red yet, not until he can impress Red with ease, and ignores that tiny nagging thought in his head that tells him he never will be.

Green realizes, when he's much older and it's far too broken to fix, that it wasn't love, not back then when he had screwed everything up. At nine, he was still too young to know what love was.

But by now, he's been in love with Red for so long that it doesn't matter anymore.

This, Green thinks, this isn't a good memory, not one that he wants to keep. If he doesn't police himself, lets his mind wander, it always comes back to this screw-up, playing back like a tape stuck in a perpetual loop. He wants to press fast forward, fast forward to the better parts, but it only rewinds and replays, and he wonders if there's even a difference between the two.

Every time he relives this, he thinks, _I could go back and fix it._ If he could go back, he could fix this, then everything would be perfect.

Still, the present is immovable, so instead, Green forces himself to retrace other memories, looking for the perfect ones that are slipping from his grasp like fine grains of sand.

o

Sometimes Green loses memories. Usually they're small, insignificant things that don't mean much, like forgetting he's already done the shopping that week and coming home to too many groceries, or discovering that he needs to place an order for a new shipment of badges, even though he doesn't remember battling half that many trainers.

And generally, it's okay with him. Those things are small things - things everyone forget, he convinces himself - and it doesn't bother him because he never remembers half the things he's forgotten.

It's the big things though, that scare him.

Green almost panics when his grandfather calls him on Monday and happily informs him, "Your sister's back in town for the weekend. You haven't met your nephew yet, right? So why don't you come down for a visit." Since when did he have a nephew? He doesn't even remember his sister moving or being pregnant or getting married. She _is_ married, right? (_Of course she would be if she has kid, dumbass_, his mind kindly informs him.)

"I don't know. I'm kind of busy here," he replies noncommittally, then amends, "But I'll try my best to make it." Because gym leader or not, his grandfather is still the most famous Pokémon researcher on the planet and if _he_ can make time for family, there's no good reason Green can't, and Green really just wants to avoid a lecture.

By Friday, the trainers left in his gym jump a foot whenever he so much as looks in their direction, and even Eevee seems both aggravated and disappointed with him, though she hasn't started disobeying him - yet.

One of the trainers finally works up the courage to ask him what's wrong.

"Nothing," he snaps at her unconvincingly, and then immediately feels bad about it. He takes a deep breath and says, "Why would you think that?"

"It's just that... you usually play fair," she says a little more timidly than he expects.

"Play fair?" he asks, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

"That's why you don't usually let Eevee fight in gym battles, right? And -" She fidgets in a way that lets Green know she's probably been coerced into this. "- you usually know how hard to push us. You have a good sense of our strengths and weaknesses, and how much we can do." He looks over her shoulder and the other trainers are staring at him expectantly. Then he looks back over his own shoulder at Eevee, who's sleeping in corner.

"I'm sorry," he says, surprising even himself. "Take Saturday off," he suggests. "Sunday too. I'll close the gym for the weekend... go and visit my grandfather."

Looks of relief spread all over his trainers' faces.

That's how Green finds himself, on Saturday afternoon, in the house he grew up in being babied by his older sister and smothered by Red's mother as they take tea together.

Green feels guilty when he sees the lines on her face that weren't there before, and a tired energy which had replaced what used to be a quiet joy for life. He should tell her where Red is, he thinks, but it's not really his place to tell. Then again, he can't remember if he's already told her and whether it'd even matter.

"I'm going to see Grandpa," he says and manages to squirm out of their stronghold. They seem a little disappointed but send him off without a fight.

"What are you doing here?" his grandfather asks when he comes into the lab, and Green looks at him strangely. Green realizes he forgets a lot of things, but he knows for sure that his grandfather had been the one who told had him to visit.

"Nevermind," his grandfather says and saunters throughout his the lab while Green takes a seat by one of the work benches.

"I have some new Pokémon to show you," Green says, proud of himself for remembering Leaf's visit last week. "From some different regions. I think you'd like to see them."

His grandfather enthusiastically takes his Pokédex and chats at Green as he looks through the entries. "You know, some of my colleagues, they've been doing research on psychic Pokémon and memory," he says, and Green's staring at the walls, listening with half an ear. "They found some interesting results. Long-term memories are mostly solidified during sleep... But the most interesting thing is that apparently psychic Pokémon can create false memories in humans."

Green barely hears the last part, but when it finally registers, he inhales a little too sharply and thinks that his world might be spinning. His grandfather's lab has never been too colorful, but now he only sees it as a dizzy swirl of greys. He tries not to cry, because - no, that can't be right and he refuses to accept that is, science be damned. He can handle forgetting things, small things, even big things, but he can't cope if there's any chance his memories are false, especially the ones he's never forgotten at all.

"I - How is Daisy's baby?" he manages to choke out, remembering why he's in Pallet in the first place.

"What baby?" his grandfather replies, confused.

Green starts to feel sick, because he really can't deal with this. "I have to go," he lies, if only to get out of there and outside where there's fresh air.

"Did you see your sister?" his grandfather calls after him on his way out the door. Green wants to yes, but he's not even sure of that anymore though it'd barely been half an hour since he saw her.

_This is a dream,_ Green convinces himself on the way back to Viridian, after he's had some time to breathe and think. All of this is a dream or, maybe more appropriately, a nightmare he's been having for weeks. This Red isn't real, Leaf's isn't real, none of this has been real for a long time.

But knowing it's a dream doesn't making it any easier to wake up.

o

This is how it doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen at Red's Championship party, after he's finally accepted the position because Green has stepped down to take the post of Viridian City gym leader. It assuredly doesn't happen after Red has defeated him for that title a dozen, a hundred times more than he could count, proving to him again and again that there's no way Green could ever catch up.

And Green certainly hasn't had a bit too much to drink on that day, no. He doesn't manage to corner Red and confess everything - everything that he did wrong, everything he's sorry for - in half-drunken and slightly incoherent sobs. He most definitely doesn't press Red against the wall after that - after coercing admissions of similar feelings out of him - doesn't kiss Red till they're both breathless and full of stormy feelings neither can put into words.

Nor does he wake up the next morning with Red next to him feeling like everything is finally fixed, that everything just may turn out alright.

Green knows it doesn't happen this way because that's the type of fairy tale romantic drivel people eat up when they _want_ to believe. And while Green may be young, he's certainly not naive and probably a lot more cynical than he should be. Reality is messy and disjointed and painful, and nothing could ever turn out that perfect when he's messed up as badly as he has.

But he's also smart enough for his own good to remember what's true and what's not, even if his mind and his heart want it to be otherwise.

(Deep down inside, Green knows that's not what happened because if it were, everything would _still_ be perfect. Because Red is all Green has ever wanted, and Green would never give up something that good, even if it's something he doesn't deserve to have.)

Green can't remember the way he and Red happened, which is a big thing to forget, even for him, but he knows how it doesn't happen.

He's just afraid that one of these days, he'll forget that he knows and believe what doesn't happen to be the truth. And that, to him, is more frightening than anything else.

o

Green, to his relief, manages to collect himself by the time he reaches Viridian City. He walks right past his apartment complex and heads straight to the gym, even though he doesn't really want to go there. There's no real reason to go either - he _did_ close it for the day, after all, so no one will be there, and it's already pretty dark out, so the likelihood of a trainer showing up to challenge him is rather low. But, in his mind, the familiarity of the gym seems more comforting to Green than the foreign space of his studio apartment.

_His home,_ Green has to remind himself, which he has to visit eventually (even if he's been avoiding it) when he finally runs out of clean clothes at the gym or on the off-chance he ever gets tired of sleeping on his office desk.

When he gets there, he stares at the "closed" sign on the door for a few seconds before fumbling around for his keys. He's just about push open the door when he hears a quiet cough from behind him, trying to get his attention.

Green's not sure what he expected, but it's certainly not Red with his damning red eyes and a sleeping Pikachu cradled in his arms.

"Red," he manages to breathe, but then he realizes - oh no - what if Red is actually dead because Green didn't visit him with supplies last week, or he'd died from something stupid like hypothermia but thinks it's all Green's fault and now his ghost is going to haunt Green forever and ever, and if Green isn't crazy yet, he's definitely going to be soon.

"Green," Red replies back, his unwavering stare fixed upon him. In his arms, Pikachu stirs slightly and curls more into Red's jacket.

Suddenly, Green has the overwhelming urge to hug Red, to touch him and make sure that he's not crazy, that Red is real - physically there and not a figment of his insane imagination.

He settles for brushing a last bit of snow out of Red's hair instead.

"What do you - what's wrong?" he chokes out and hopes his voice doesn't sound as shaky to Red as it does to him. There's nothing wrong with Pikachu, right? He stares at sleeping mouse in Red's arms.

Red diverts his gaze to the side, not quite looking at the floor. "I was wondering if I can stay. In the gym?" he says so quietly that it takes a moment for Green to process that there's a question at all.

Green stares at Red for a long moment, and Red is trying hard to look at anything but Green.

"No." Green's voice is quite firm. Red's eyes jolt up to look at him in shock. "But, you can stay with me at my apartment," he finishes thoughtfully, and slides the key back into the door to lock it.

Red looks at him with thankful eyes the entire way there, and Green remembers thinking, this is good thing, something he'll want to hold on to. Because Red coming home, Red coming back to him has always been a memory that he doesn't want slipping from his grasp.

They both somehow manage to fit onto his bed, not too uncomfortably, and even Pikachu, who is asleep with Eevee on a pool of blankets in the corner, doesn't seem to have any intention of disturbing them.

"Sorry," Green mutters into Red's hair as they fall asleep, though he's not sure if it's for his tiny apartment, the cramped bed, or for something else.

In the morning, Green wakes up disoriented and tangled up in Red. When he blinks, his world fades back into focus, and the colors of a warm morning and a blue sky filtering in through his window chase away the last bit of residual monochrome that had trailed him out of his sleep.

He barely manages to twist out of his sheets when Red grabs his arm to pull him back into the bed.

"Don't leave," Red pleads, voice laced with sleep.

"Shouldn't that be my line?" Green says. It's not a joke, but his voice is tinted with humor.

Red's sleepy eyes squint at him with genuine confusion. Like he's been back for so long that it doesn't make sense for Green to say that anymore. Or like he's never left at all.

"Oh," Green says. _Oh._

"It's Saturday," Red says and pulls Green down for a kiss.

_No it's not,_ Green thinks. _It should be Sunday today because yesterday was Saturday._ But then he remembers, of course - it's always Saturday in his dreams. Still, he lies back down on the bed, and wraps an arm around Red's waist.

"Too early," Red mutters and closes his eyes. _Go back to sleep,_ he tells Green in as few words as possible.

Out of the corner of his eye, Green can see the calendar Red has been keeping for him. There's a note reminding him to order more badges on the 18th, a blue sticker marking Leaf's visit in two weeks, and a scribble about buying a present for his nephew's third birthday next month. Because if Green can't remember, Red would - for both of them, and it'd be enough.

For some reason, it feels like everything will be okay, Green decides as he lets Red's breathing lull him back to sleep. This time, as his dreams fade into whiteness, Green can't help but think that somehow, it feels a bit like home.

_fin._

* * *

1) HBIC!Eevee basically comes from a Pixiv comic. Basically, the idea is that Green's Eevee (from Yellow) never evolved, but became so powerful that all the other Pokemon are scared of it. And it wasn't fair for Green to use Eevee in gym battle anymore. So Eevee just sits around and looks pretty and acts like HBIC all day instead.

2) From Bulbapedia: "Red is introduced as a curious 11-year-old boy from Pallet Town...having gained an interest in Pokmon after his best friend, [Green], stopped playing with him and became a bully." Green gives Red a lot of stuff throughout FRLG too. I think a crush can sufficiently explain his behaviour.

3) Also from Bulbapedia: "The player can face [Green] in a rematch at the Fighting Dojo...He can be called for a rematch on Sunday night." There's no particular reason I picked Saturday, but I figured he probably likes taking the weekend off.

4) It is actually possible to create false memories, even to frightening degrees of inaccuracy - "our memories are fallible." [/psych dork]


End file.
